July 2012
“Some sexual theorists have argued that the perceptual link between orgasm and death is traceable to the elevated state in which orgasm in a rare few cases is accompanied by a loss of consciousness. Another explanation for the petit mort idea is inherent in a rare but persistent folk belief, of uncertain origin but found in cultures from Europe to the Far East, that a person is born with a certain number of orgasms in him or her, and that when the last is used, the person died.”
—Jonathan Margolis (The Intimate History of the Orgasm)
